PV Communications president tells Rotary about his business

Monday

Dec 4, 2017 at 12:01 AM

By JIM BREWERCorrespondent

LOUDONVILLE — Dan Strong, president of PV Communications in Loudonville, traced the company's history and talked about its innovative products at the Rotary Club of Loudonville meeting Thursday, Nov. 30.

The business started in 1980 when Strong, asked by his older brother Bob, began working on a business forms business.

"Essentially we designed, had printed and maintained inventory of a multi-part business forms business for area business and industry," he said.

"Such forms don't exist today, but back when we started, one client, Samaritan Hospital, has us develop no fewer than 400 different forms," he said.

Later, around 1990, one of the firm's partners, Dick Porter, developed a connection with Rubbermaid in Wooster that asked PV to help them with several simple printing projects.

"These grew until they became more than the business forms part of the business, and commercial design work and printing became the majority part of our business," Strong said. "Today we do hardly any business forms."

Instead the product line has become support for commercial businesses, and for manufacturers who make and sell commercial products.

"For instance, last year we developed new packaging for a customer introducing new products in 1,700 retail outlets. We designed these personalized kits for a nifty $600,000."

In its 37 years in business, Strong said PV has become a very capital intensive business (millions worth of production equipment) with 53 employees and a average tenure of 18 years per employee.

"We work very hard, and have fantastic employees, and we try to do right by them," he said. "Most of our workers are local, trained to do business the way we do it. We often hire a local based on what we believe will be his potential, rather than his current background, and that has worked overly well."

He also said the company is doing very well.

"There have been times when we could have made a mistake that would have shut us down, but we are coming off our second record year in a row and well on our way, I believe, for a third record year."